The larks trilled their cries that
Nested in my ears in birdsong.
I saw the thaw of winter had begun.
Soon spring would rush in on her
Pastel heels bringing forth blooms.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To read Linda’s bio and enjoy more of her verse on WIZ go here, here, and here.
the hand of winter stretched out
his grey gloves and poured snow
out of his pitcher it fell upon the
world in cold numbing waves it
washed away all the colors of fall —
it beat back my favorite lilies into
the hand of white dust like people
are prone to beat one another into
the dust for a sense of self worth. [...]
I watched as the white of snow
starched the earth clean of sins —
like the Savior washed me white
by his blood. It seemed a stark
contrast of his shedding white for
red and the earth shedding scarlet
for white, but I think He favors the
irony just as much as we do. I stood
in the bone numbing cold of winter,
letting [...]
In the tar-like black sky
structures float like ghosts
through the illumination from bulbs
hovering like flying saucers over
the road. No heavenly
luminaries accompany me on this lonely journey.
Only those cones of light brighten the route ahead.
Nevertheless, I must persist.
I am a modern Hebrew
fleeing the Egypt of the office, escaping to
the Promised Land of the field. There,
as I stand [...]
I meet a young couple in the canyon. A dog in their company tells me more about them than they guess. I see a piñon pine tree alight with fall sunshine. As I exit the canyon, I discover a prying eye. This is another long and the last installment in this series but it isn’t [...]
This multiple-part series is from a longer work-in-progress I’ve begun that recounts my experiences in Recapture Canyon in southeast Utah. Woven throughout the longer narrative are my ideas about language’s part in evolution, culture, and relationship–including what language reveals about and how it affects the ways we treat with people who live with what I [...]
Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.” The [...]
Today I read your verses, and I wept.
Your loss, transcending centuries, has torched
a hole in my self-pity, scattered ash
across four hundred years, and scorched
my martyrdom into the oak-slat floor.
The sad account of how your house burned down,
your passing of the ruins every day.
Each broken brick of future, smudged and brown.
And now I know the leaving [...]
How ugly you all are,
An all-over ugly!
Iris bulbs unearthed and scythed
Of top leaves,
I lay your twisted, tuberous
Bodies across a gutted paper sack
And take a moment to grimace
At your grotesquery.
Dirt clings to your stringy reaching roots.
Not even warm water and bleach
Can pretty the rough hide of your skin.
Poor horrid hags!
But wait—don’t droop,
Shrivel dry in shame.
For I [...]
That industrious black-banded yellow worker, the bee, and a dragonfly soar swiftly, silently through the sky
The glowing rosy crescent rising slowly after the iridescent sunset and the stars glinting like jewels amidst a sky as black as tar
The fresh greenery mushroom every spring and the rolling hills with their lush grassy frills
The sun shielded by [...]